Self Knowledge
by sharp tongued trixie
Summary: Why does Amortentia smell as it does to Hermione? And what is the third scent that she doesn't want to reveal?
1. Freshly Mown Grass

The first two, those she had revealed without hesitation, were both smells of death, ultimately. Constructive death ('redemptive' death would be too strong a term for such minor matters—or would it?), but death nonetheless. If Hermione had to describe the aroma of freshly-mown grass, she would have replied that it smelt of life and greenness and sunshine and youth and something akin to hope. For once, Hermione's instinct overrode her intellect to a small degree (for it is only grass, after all), and ignored that grass died to bring about her favorite scent. Those grass cuttings would decompose and nourish the grass from which they came, and more grass would grow and be cut and die and so on for ever.

Hogwarts was surrounded by verdant fields. But Hermione insisted that magical techniques for cutting grass produced an inferior aroma to Muggle methods. She thinks back to happy days from her childhood, when she sat under a tree reading and her father struggled to mow their lawn with his battered machine. Sometimes her mother would bring out lemon squash for her two beloved laborers and the three of them would sit together, her mother and father chatting quietly while Hermione continued to read (no one could pry books from her hands back then, either.) Once she went to Hogwarts, these scenes stopped, for no particular reason she could discern. She now preferred to read inside, and she was too fascinated with the spectacles of her new magical world to notice more mundane pleasures, like the scent of mown grass. During her first few months at Hogwarts, when she was bitterly lonely, she did dwell on those memories, even though they were Muggle pleasures and she was so eager to be accepted by her magical peers. But once she had made friends with Harry and Ron, she ceased to think much about those days. In fact, it wasn't until she smelt the Amortentia in her sixth year that she realized that those experiences were still important to her. Despite championing Muggles in the abstract throughout her days at Hogwarts, she did not think much anymore about her own particular Muggle experiences. She spent less and less time at home, even during the holidays. After all, Harry needed her. It was only grass.


	2. New Parchment

It is no stretch at all to say that parchment, though prepared and sanitized, bears the mark of death. Hermione did not doubt that no other student had given thought to whence came the parchment that became so ill-treated with misspelled essays and dashed-off homework assignments. But Hermione investigated this topic with her usual zeal. The process of making parchment was certainly speedier than when performed by medieval Muggles, but it required the same raw materials—animal skins. Many, many animal skins were required each year by Hogwarts, even though the house-elves salvaged and recycled what they found in student's wastebins. The number of beasts that needed to be slaughtered for their skins was far greater than the number required for food. Each shelf in the sizable library that she loved so much represented dead animals in the thousands. Hermione knew the relationship between parchment and death.

No doubt her classmates sniggered over Hermione's revelation that she linked the scent of parchment to deep love. _Typical bookworm_. But for Hermione, it was no silly or clichéd response. Books were where she found her answers, where she sought meaning. Though her love of books separated her from her peers, it is also what brought her admiration from adults and enabled her to keep her closest friends safe. So while animal skin, tanned in lye, objectively smelled less pleasing than wood pulp, the smell of parchment represented for her answers and solutions and magic and significance and wisdom and creativity and life itself and something akin to hope. New parchment in particular meant _new_ answers, represented the possibility that all problems could be solved by reading this new volume. And when the books failed the only thing she could think to do was open a new one and start afresh in constant longing that this next one would provide the answer at long last. She would never admit in words, to others or to herself, that her books might not provide all the answers. They might not tell Harry how to defeat Voldemort. They might not bring back the dead. They might not—they might not help her do _that_, either, that other preoccupation she couldn't yet, perhaps couldn't ever verbalize. But she continued to love her books, and the scent of parchment brought her both excitement and peace.


End file.
